Missions to Movements
Missions to Movements is the nonprofit marketing and fundraising podcast that helps you grow recurring donors, scale monthly giving programs, and build digital campaigns that convert.
Hosted by Dana Snyder—speaker, strategist, and founder of Positive Equation—this show is packed with actionable nonprofit growth strategies, social media tips, and fundraising best practices.
Each week, you’ll hear how organizations are increasing donor retention, building thought leadership, and using digital fundraising to drive real impact. If you want to learn how to attract monthly donors, master nonprofit marketing, and transform your mission into a movement, this podcast is for you.
Missions to Movements
Want to 5x Your Impact? This Executive Director Did - Here’s How
What if your nonprofit could grow its impact by 5x, WITHOUT increasing staff or burning out your team? That’s exactly what Greg Harrell-Edge did during his tenure as Executive Director of CoachArt. And you’d never believe that a mindset shift ultimately led to their 37% year-over-year increase in impact, sustained over five years.
Greg shares how a single board retreat sparked a movement within the organization, and why traditional models of nonprofit growth no longer serve today’s landscape. He also reveals how he created a unique spin on monthly giving by forming online advisory boards and inviting donors to contribute not just funds, but also their expertise.
Now, Greg is channeling his hard-won insights into the Proimpact Project, a content and community hub built to help Executive Directors embrace modern growth strategies. You’ll hear practical frameworks (like his 3x 3y napkin test), fresh takes on donor engagement, and ideas for building a movement.
Resources & Links
Learn more about the Proimpact Project on their website and connect with Greg on LinkedIn.
Greg shares his TEDx talk, An Impact-First Way to Think About Charity, on his LinkedIn.
Check out one of Greg’s favorite books, Obsessed: Building a Brand People Love from Day One, by Emily Heyward.
The Recurring Giving Workshop: A Working Session to Increase Online Donations - 9/24 @ 2 pm ET - RSVP HERE!
This show is brought to you by iDonate. Your donation page is leaking donors, and iDonate's new pop-up donation form is here to fix that. See it in action.
Let's Connect!
- Send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and let us know what you think of the show!
- My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.
- Want to book Dana as a speaker for your event? Click here!
Today on the show is someone who's all in on reshaping what nonprofit leadership can look like. Greg Harlhage is the founder of the Pro Impact Project, a new content and community hub designed specifically to support executive directors with modern growth strategies. Before launching his new venture, greg spent nearly a decade as the ED of CoChart, where he led the charge in quintupling their impact, delivering five times more arts and athletic lessons to kids with chronic illnesses. One of his most innovative strategies was a whole new spin on monthly giving, creating online advisory boards where supporters contributed not only monthly donations but also their advice and professional networks.
Speaker 1:Yes, I literally love this and we talk all about it. So in this episode, we talk about why EDs need to think long-term more now than ever, how monthly giving can and should be a strategic cornerstone of scalable growth, the mindset shifts that helped him grow CoachArt and what he's building next with the Pro Impact Project to support you bold impact executive directors and teams. Plus, we reflect on really the state of the nonprofit sector right now and why now is the time to think bigger and really build a culture that leads with innovation. Let's get into the episode.
Speaker 2:What does aspirational look like? My whole background. I want to take an organization, take a long-term view, use innovation, use technology, try to scale. What do we really think that means? And at the end of day one of a two-day retreat, we had settled on this idea of exactly what I mentioned. Actually, what if we set the goal of trying to triple in the first three years, triple our impact? I remember one of the board members said I just thought that nonprofits we had increased our impact about 5% a year, every year and I thought that that's what nonprofits were supposed to do. And then over the next five years five or six years we averaged an average of 37% year over year growth and impact every year. And there were a lot of things that we figured out, but I think it really just came from changing that mindset.
Speaker 1:Okay. So on the other side of the microphone is one of the clients I worked with years ago, back when I was living in Los Angeles, which is where Positive Equation all began. Greg, you have sat on both sides of the table now an executive director at CoachArt, scaling impact, and now as a new founder of Pro Impact Project, which is very exciting. Some snuffs what really excited you to and inspired you, I guess, to launch this resource hub specifically for EDs on modern growth strategies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a bunch of different things did and thank you so much for having me and I am trying to get the Pro Impact Project. We're waiting on our 501c3 approval, so I'm trying to get myself back over to the side of the table of being on the nonprofit side as soon as they'll let me back in. But, yeah, a bunch of things inspired me, one of which basically feeling like there were all of these things as the nonprofit sector was shifting, that EDs could approach the ED role in particular in all new ways that incorporate. I think there's been all of this innovation in terms of marketing and fundraising and technology, and that the ED role in particular still needs to have a bit of an innovation and overhaul in ways that combine all of those strategies together. And I would say that there are two different inspiration points that are really uniquely different. My dad spent his entire career in the nonprofit sector as a nonprofit exec in the 80s and 90s he did not know that.
Speaker 2:Okay, he did and he found it super fulfilling. But he also was constantly frustrated by a lot of this sort of systemic incrementalism, what we now call the overhead myth all of these things that we're still wrestling with today. He found frustrating then, and so I got really interested in kind of what brought me to the nonprofit sector. He passed away my first year out of college and I never at that point would have thought that I'd go into nonprofit, and a few years later I got sort of obsessed with this idea of what does the future of the sector look like? How can we modernize and overhaul this? And the one other inspiration that I want to call out is you and what you've done.
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, thanks, yeah, absolutely. That was not what I thought you were going to go with.
Speaker 2:Well, you mentioned that we had worked together. I don't even know if I've told you this, but when CoachArt was planning on expanding nationwide, I had always had in mind, okay, that's when we really want to ramp up the amount, that we start working with you. It was like we're going to go nationwide, we're going to roll out a whole new fundraising plan all across the country, people who have never heard of us, and we've got to go to Dana. And I reached out to you and you said you know, I'm kind of shifting into, I think I can make more of an impact, creating content and courses and things that scale more, and you're the first person in our sector who I had seen doing that, and so the entire time that you've been on your journey, I've been very much a fan of the work that you've been doing and thinking what would it look like to eventually do that for EDs? And that's essentially what I'm trying to do now.
Speaker 1:So I love this. Okay, so you, which thank you for saying that, that is very kind. I didn't know the history in the background of your dad all the years that I've known you. Do you think I actually was having this conversation? I was at a Braves game. I'm part of the young nonprofit professional board in Atlanta, although I'm definitely on the latter half of the age range of that group.
Speaker 1:But we were kind of talking about when is it your time to move on as like an ED of an organization where it's like your sweet spot is this and you accomplish that and then you give it to somebody else to bring new life.
Speaker 1:To get to the next point, because I see this a lot of time with like founders, and I have a friend who founded a school and she's kind of in this mode where she really rocked at the beginning stages in the building and now she's seen some challenges and some struggles and I frankly told her like maybe that's your zone of genius. Do you think that some EDs hold on too long and that they just stay and stay and stay when maybe it's not best serving the organization anymore? I don't know if that's a weird thing to say, but it's like, did you see yourself really having a lot of momentum in a certain part of your ED years at CoachArt? And then you were like, okay, I need to let somebody else step into this. Like, does that ever go through your mind when you were in that position?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And now, having left, I look back and wonder did I stay too long and did I succumb to exactly that? You know, when I sort of developed that passion and career obsession with what the future of nonprofit leadership looked like, I was about 30 years old and I thought, you know, should I start an agency and try to do consulting? And I thought I think I want to do this in two stages try to run an organization, develop that framework what do I think the modern framework for running an organization looks like? And then shift into something where I'm trying to more broadly be part of a sector-wide communication and conversation about that. Who's amazing.
Speaker 2:And I would always tell her I think I'm about two years away from that transition. And every year we would have this big conversation and I would say I think I'm still about two years away and once we go nationwide then I'll do one more year. And then we went nationwide. It was like, yeah, but there's all the you know, now we're into this community flywheel. There's always more that you could dig into. And so when I finally did move on, she now has taken over as the executive director. She's doing an awesome job. I mean, she is going to be better at it than I ever was. And I look back and think, yeah, did I hit that sweet spot right? Or did I stay too long? Because it's so easy, there is always something else, the goalpost can always move to. Okay, when we've done this achievement, then it'll feel like we've accomplished what we meant to do.
Speaker 1:So that's exactly what my friend is at. She has said the exact same things and it's like everybody's in these roles like normally has such a good heart and wants to see things through. But she finally was like I'm not getting us there and she's like maybe it is a little bit me and like I need to let somebody else who has a different skill set come in and my skill sets are best used somewhere else. So when you're thinking about the build, this new platform, can you explain a little bit about what you mean and who you want to be a part of it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I've developed over those years at CoachArt this sort of playbook where largely it was taking from the work of folks like you looking at case studies from all across the nonprofit sector of what the most modern, innovative version of that part of running an organization looked like and compiling that whether we use those at CoachArt or not sort of compiling that into a playbook which I've been calling the Pro Impact Playbook, and the name is based on the belief that nonprofit has probably never been the right label for our sector, filled with people who are trying to make an impact on the world, and so pro impact meaning for impact, but also professional impact creators. And what does it look like for this next generation of professional?
Speaker 2:impact creators and what does it look like for this next generation of professional impact creators? And so have developed that, and it's both these sort of foundational mindset changes and cultural changes, and also a whole host of tactics and one of the things about moving on it's scary to go from these ideas that you've been passionate about for a long time to starting at step zero and trying to teach yourself how to create content and putting out the first things that you know. Everybody tells you they're not going to get any traction. You've got to just put it out and do all that hard work of feeling fast and whatnot, and so I'm early on in that process right now.
Speaker 1:Just to really like break it down. This is a community, this is like a hub with education resources, community for EDs at any size organization, any year, one year, 25, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, an ED. I think the sweet spot and this will be a little bit of iterative process in and of itself I think the sweet spot is probably EDs who have been in the role for two years or less and are imagining new ways of doing things. Part of how I think about this work we've got all of this data that says that millennials and below are approaching non-profit totally different, as donors, as volunteers, and so I think naturally they're going to approach the role totally different as EDs and I'm a geriatric millennial. That idea of aging out of the young nonprofit group and joining the graybeard crew I totally relate to, I think as a geriatric millennial, as the tip of this wave of folks in the ED role in particular, where the people coming behind are going to be incredible and take all new approaches, and so now I want to try to figure out what types of resources, what types of content and community they most need to do their job well, and stuff that I looked around and couldn't find as an ED myself.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I think did you go to school to be an ED. No.
Speaker 1:Correct. Okay. So I have rarely heard somebody say like, yes, I went to nonprofit management and got my bachelor's degree, but then I also had I mean to really be an ED, then I got my business degree and et cetera, et cetera. Right, there's so much just ad hoc learning that happens that you end up into a role like that, and something that I wanted to dive into with you is obviously one of my favorite talks of conversation around monthly giving and you really pioneered this unique spin on it and I'm sure it'll bring a lot of your background into the resources and education you provide. But it was like this blending of financial support with an advisory board. Can you explain that model, the mindset behind it and how it actually functioned?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I think it's an example in a lot of ways of that idea of coming from a development background but then sitting in the ED role and seeing the organization and the metrics more broadly than just having the focus on dollars itself, where we were trying to figure out experiments that we could run with monthly giving. And I've always been a huge believer and I know we'll talk about it of how monthly giving fits into how a modern ED can and should approach running an organization. But there's this old expression in fundraising and I'm a big believer in the type of innovation that says you got to learn all the rules first before you break them. So I was always very interested in how nonprofit fundraising had traditionally been done and there's this old expression that I imagine you've heard of if you want advice, ask for money. And if you want money, ask for advice.
Speaker 2:And the idea behind it is partly that if you start with a kind of real and genuine conversation about what should we be doing, get someone to buy in on that level, they're naturally going to want to help out and support it, and that people don't want to be viewed just as a donor, that they really think of themselves as supporting this cause.
Speaker 2:So we experimented with that idea when we were first launching our app. We thought there's so many little questions about rolling out this app that would be helpful to have some sort of junior professionals in tech that we could go to. So we use LinkedIn. We approached a bunch of folks and we said can you both give us your advice in this online advisory board and also commit to be a monthly donor? I think we had several levels and it was like you can start at a really low level if that's right for your career. You kind of choose and the entire thing is we're going to ask you for advice and then the funding that you give is going to help make possible the types of advice that you're giving.
Speaker 2:We ended up doing probably four different versions of that over the years. Every time the interest was unbelievable, inspiring, overwhelming, unbelievable, inspiring, overwhelming. The problem, to scale, was that we never had enough advice to be able to scale it into something that was a hundred person or thousand person group, but just on a purely value proposition basis. We would reach out to strangers, cold outreach, and say, hey, here's this thing, can you give us your advice and make a donation? And I mean, how many times in a monthly giving program when you do cold outreach, do you hear from people? I've wanted to do something like this. I didn't know how to do it. Dream answer. Thank you so much. Right, exactly, and so I think the value proposition of it is something that definitely appealed to people, the more that we can figure out how to execute on that how many people would be part of that, like advisory board, team, committee at a time?
Speaker 1:Or was it just like ongoing? As long as they would stay, they could stay. Or was it like set periods of time?
Speaker 2:We experimented with both models. The sweet spot was always like maybe 15 to 25 people. Once it got more than that it started to become unwieldy of genuinely sort of like asking for and receiving you know the advice, but yeah, that was always sort of the size of the group. We experimented with different platforms. The very first one was just an email list and we would email them. You know, hey, can anybody help us with HubSpot automation? We always were trying to tinker to find the right sort of execution of it on something that definitely felt like you know an idea that people were into.
Speaker 1:So cool. I love that. And literally to your point about this is and listeners have heard me talk about this before but the genesis of me being a monthly donor to the Hope Booth. And then Gloria Yamana, the founder, asked me for advice. She's like will you jump on a call? We're really trying to figure out how to grow the movement, their monthly giving program.
Speaker 1:So we jumped on a call and one of my ideas to her was that you should host local parties with members of the movement. So of course she was smart, she goes. Well, would you host one? And I was like, yeah, I would actually. And I was like you got me. I mean literally like from your mouth to fruition. And I was like, yeah, I would actually. And I was like you got me. I mean literally like from your mouth to fruition. And I just hosted that in March and it was super fun. I was like my birthday party. So that is very true, I love that example. Okay, I will ask one more question about monthly giving and then I will jump onto the next topic. But for EDs that are resistant to a recurring giving program, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:I think and it's interesting, I've been thinking about this a lot you posted something similar about this on LinkedIn. I think part of what we're trying to do at Pro Impact Project is shift the mindset. Where there is all of this external systemic pressure on executive directors to think more short-term rather than long-term especially compared to CEOs and for-profit or for a tech startup or whatnot We've got all of these metrics and everything else that are overly sort of aimed at short-term. So I think, as an ED's perspective shifts towards the long-term, monthly giving starts jumping out as just the most natural thing that your organization can focus on to align. I mean just the fact that we know that monthly giving has a higher lifetime value than pretty much any other type of giving. I think, then, it needs to flip the question to EDs Well, if it has the higher lifetime value, what very good reason do you have why that's not the single biggest thing that you're focusing on?
Speaker 1:Do you think it's the ED as much as you think it's the board? Is the board putting the pressure on the ED for the short term?
Speaker 2:The board and I think it goes beyond board. You know that we've got foundations that are very focused on this year's P&L, and you know whether you're in the red or not, regardless of how much you have in cash reserves. There's this system. I mean, even the overhead myth, specifically, is sort of focused on well, how much you know this donation that I give you, what are you going to turn around and spend it on tomorrow, as opposed to what's your vision for creating impact with this in the long term? And so I think it's systemic rather than pushing back on it, and that the single most part of the pro-impact playbook is the idea that the single most important thing that any ED can do is try to refocus everyone's attention. Your team, your board on here is our inspiring long-term vision for how we're going to impact, and that we need to be the ones who are trying to shift that perspective.
Speaker 1:Yep. And when you say long-term, what does that equal to you?
Speaker 2:It depends. I think it depends on that organization and the mission and what their vision really looks like, I think anywhere from three to 10 years, I think. So often our vision statements are something that are really nebulous and almost impossible to achieve Right. We want every single person affected by this illness to have access to this, as opposed to three years from now. We want to triple what we're doing Right.
Speaker 2:As a starting point, an exercise that I recommend for folks for EDs in particular, but anybody really just on the back of a napkin, I call it the 3X3Y exercise. That if you were to try to triple your impact in three years, that if you just start from that, what would that look like? What would be the barriers to that? What would you need? What investments would you need? And if you come up with a price tag at the end of that for what it would take to do that, you then have a napkin that you could take to a donor and say, hey, I want to get your advice on. How does something like this sound? That type of exercise that I think we could do more of.
Speaker 1:The very tangible, specific storytelling around it. Yes, I definitely agree. There's so many things that you do in an ED role. Was there something that you constantly wrestled with or that were challenges with that you hope to help others with through the platform?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my answer to that is there were so many things about what does that idea look like in execution of shifting perspective from short-term to long-term that I wish that I had realized much earlier and realized too late in the game, which is why you want to stay there and say, okay, well, actually, let's spend two more years working on this, but one of them that just in the last year that I was there hit me like a ton of bricks was the idea of investing in building our email lists.
Speaker 2:Every fundraiser we talked to when we would interview people would say, okay, well, how many emails do you have? Well, I want to write, set with you level set how much we'll be able to fundraise. And it was like, okay, well, who does email list building? What does that look like Other than just our newsletter? Why would someone want to give us their email? We can't offer them a coupon, we can't offer them a lead magnet. And that's the kind of thing where we started to figure it out, towards the end of my tenure, that I want to take the things that took us years of trial and error and say, okay, now you all take this and move the ball forward and really optimize this.
Speaker 1:You definitely could do lead magnets. There's a bunch of things that CoachArt could do as lead magnets for parents with kids that you're working with. There's lots of things, but what about for? Donors, those families and the supporters of those families then could become the supporters, that's true.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you one sort of thing that we started to experiment on, a kind of lead magnet idea, or why would someone give you their email, a potential donor give you their email? We started experimenting with this concept that we called micro impact and the idea that there were ways, online ways, that with a click of a button and just a few words, you know, just a little bit of time, anyone could make a positive impact on one of our kids. Oh, that's cool. And we took examples that you see go viral on Twitter or whatnot, and we would find kids. One of our first ones was a kid who was starting high school and he said what's your advice?
Speaker 2:Then I'm nervous about starting high school period, but as a child affected by chronic illness, I'm particularly worried about how I'm going to be received. What are people's best advice for starting high school? And we just posted that blog and said to comment, you have to give us your email to be able to add it on here, but give us advice or give 50 shout outs to this child who has a surgery coming up next week, things like that this sort of micro impact that people had to give their email to participate in.
Speaker 1:That's a really great idea. That's really cool. I mean, with ideas like that that are very creative and you were talking about, like the kind of the three X you did that when you were at CoachArt that growth, like what do you think it was about? Was it the team? Like what strategies? What was the most transformational during your time that allowed you to see transformational growth with the organization that other EDs are just like maybe grasping for right now? That allowed you, was it, to feel supported by? Did you have the right people? Did you just have the ideas and the team to execute it? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Sure, we had a lot of advantages at CoachArt. We had an amazing team who stayed for a really long time, we had a board who was willing to buy into this idea. But I'll tell you, I think the single most transformational change was just that shift in mindset and it was literally my first day as the ED. We did a handoff with the previous ED at the annual board retreat and it was a two-day retreat and it wasn't very scripted because I was just coming in. She had sort of prepared some you know, it was this very transitionary period and she was amazing and she had done a lot to focus the organization's work, which I'm incredibly grateful on. We were doing too many programs and she whittled it down to just our most impactful program.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is so important. I think that is a very common problem yeah. And I was trying to do everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's harder work telling people, okay, we're going to have to cut this and cut this. That was, yet again, one of those advantages that I felt like I walked into. I felt like I would have had to do that in year one and because you know, we shared that approach, but I was glad that I didn't. You know that had already been done. So we had this conversation with the board where we said, okay, what does aspirational look like? My whole background. I want to take an organization, take a long-term view, use innovation, use technology, try to scale. What do we really think that means?
Speaker 2:And at the end of day one of a two-day retreat, we had settled on this idea of exactly what I mentioned. Actually, what if we set the goal of trying to triple in the first three years? Triple our impact? And I think that's really critical, where we weren't measuring it by our total revenue, we're measuring it by impact. And so I said, okay, is everybody in the room? Are we planting the flag? Actually, our board chair at the time said I think we need to plant the flag. Moment, are we saying we're trying to triple?
Speaker 2:And at that point we didn't have a plan. We had some sense of how we were going to use technology. And so I stayed up that night with the ED and we mapped out some exercises and we showed up the next day and said, okay, this is day one of trying to triple in the next three years, and I think just that flip in perspective changes the energy. I remember one of the board members said I just thought the nonprofits we had increased our impact about 5% a year every year and I thought that that's what nonprofits were supposed to do. And then over the next five years, five or six years we averaged an average of 37% year-over-year growth and impact every year and there were a lot of things that we figured out, but I think it really just came from changing that mindset.
Speaker 1:You are the second ED to have said something like that. That happened at a board retreat. That galvanized the board and got them on the same page for the vision Literally. That's very interesting, and she also had incredible growth, incredible partnerships, incredible support. And I think it starts there. I love that you said that and if listeners, if you're not having these conversations at your board retreats, it's like really like progressive discussions. Maybe you should, maybe you should think about it. Okay, here's one question If the board wasn't receptive, what do you think would have happened? Ooh, or what would you have done? I guess is an even better question.
Speaker 2:So I picked that role and job because of the board and because of the receptivity. So I think there is an element of that right. But I think if the board is not receptive at the end of the day and one thing I want to make sure to mention that with everything going on right now, our traditional models are breaking and failing us more than ever, and I know on LinkedIn all the time we're hearing people say it's really tough, it's a really scary time right now. It's really tough. It's a really scary time right now. So the idea of like, hey, let's do this big aspirational, plant the flag, I think can feel I've gotten some comments from folks that are a little bit like read the room, man, we're talking about sustainability. Part of my answer to that is the idea. There's this Winston Churchill quote don't let a good crisis go to waste.
Speaker 1:I've heard that too.
Speaker 2:And I think there are organizations that are going to, out of this moment, make big shifts, and so this kind of goes to the board thing.
Speaker 2:I think when you go back to first principles of a nonprofit, the thing that we most fundamentally need to grow, when you take out all the issues that we're having with government funding and everything else grow, when you take out all the issues that we're having with government funding and everything else is if you can put together an inspiring and compelling vision that an individual will fund. That's kind of all you need. And so if your board doesn't do that, if they're not going to introduce, you start just going through your donor Rolodex and reaching out to people and saying, hey, can I pitch you on this idea? What would it look like to triple? Here's a napkin, like again that thing. And while a board might say, well, I don't think that we should be biting off that much, when it's all concept, if you come back and say, well, I did have a conversation with this donor of ours and they'd be willing to triple their gift if we're, you know, offer a match or whatever it is, then all of a sudden it becomes a lot easier to get behind.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, my gosh, I love that you're mentioning this. I'm trying to look behind me and see if I have the book.
Speaker 3:It's one of I don't know if I have it behind me.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite books is Obsessed and it's all about the founder of I think it's Red Antler Agency and she helped build the Casper's of the world. Like some of the most well-known, all burgers, like some of the most, like well-known social impact kind of like based for-profit brands and talked about. Like what makes us as humans, as individuals, like obsessed with, like a particular brand that we want to buy a sweatshirt that looks exactly like another sweatshirt but it has to have that logo on it, or I'm not going to. You know what I mean. People are super fans of Patagonia because of what it stands for and what their brand identity is, versus another one that they're like, nope, not going to do that one, but I'm going to pay more for this one. And, to your point, that's all about when you think about the nonprofits that have really been excelling in the past decade. They have that aura to them, that momentum that as an individual, you can do something. It's compelling. The brand is strong. There's usually a very progressive thought leader at the helm that is speaking and doing all this outward research, and so I think you're right. I think there is this.
Speaker 1:I mean, I look back when we think back to like. Airbnbs and Ubers are a great example. When would we have ever thought we would be renting other people's houses and staying them? Whenever did we think we were going to get into a stranger's car? Whenever all you're ever taught is like never get in a stranger's car. These just take over our lives and we use them all the time now.
Speaker 1:But if you would have said that 15, 20 years ago, you'd been like yeah, right, Good joke, Right, yeah. And so what is that for us? Like, how do we you're saying your dad was facing the same frustrations that you were facing Like, how do we shift that? How do we let like and I actually just had a podcast interview with a consultant in Canada and they're about to go through their political election interview with a consultant in Canada and they're about to go through their political election, and she was like it doesn't matter who's in power. There's ebbs and flows all the time about what they're going to want to support and what they're not going to want to support, and we don't want to be on the other end of that and letting that dictate the success of the organization. And so how do we empower ourselves to have the agency and to move forward and I don't have all the answers, but we sure have some really smart people doing great work in this space. That I'm sure we could figure it out.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you one really quickly that made me think of. Do you know the Scott Harrison quote about the t-shirt? No, so he talks about this idea of that making people feel guilty is an effective way to get them to donate money, but they're never going to wear your t-shirt that way.
Speaker 2:And then if our messaging you know that our messaging needs to be more aspirational, and then people will give money and wear your t-shirt. He has this like t-shirt rule, I think, where every piece of fundraising they do, he wants people to ask will this make somebody more or less likely to wear our t-shirt? And if it's going to make them less likely, we don't want to do it, which again goes back to that idea of taking into account the long-term, not just one expression that I keep going back to and putting this content together is penny wise and pound foolish and the number of things that we do in the sector that do work in the short term but they limit our ability to succeed in the long term. And when you shift that mindset and you're running an organization, you start making a list of those. It's amazing how many of those things we do and that if you just do it like this, it's more effective in the long term and so it's, you know, really comes back to that mindset.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I'm sure oh my gosh listeners, I'm sure you're like nodding your head, wanting to like join this conversation. I feel like we could do this around like a campfire chat or a dinner conversation together and have so many powerful voices. What do you, I mean in a final kind of wrap up question what is your hope let's talk short-ish term the next year to like three years as this platform, this community, this new organization you're building, that you're really devoting yourself to. What is your hope, what is your vision for this? To do.
Speaker 2:So there's sort of like the vision for the organization and the vision more broadly.
Speaker 2:I think the vision for the organization that idea that we talked about trying to create something that genuinely supports as many EDs as possible who are trying to do this shift at their organization and become more modern, take a more long-term view, not do things that are penny-wise and pound-foolish etc.
Speaker 2:And all of the tactics and whatnot that it looks like to do that.
Speaker 2:More broadly, I think that work and that organization is part of a bigger shift that I think is happening already and is going to happen, and I just want my entity to hopefully play a part in that is evolving the overall nonprofit sector, both for the people in it I just gave a TEDx talk about the idea that there are more and more nonprofits who are modernizing, but that's only half of it.
Speaker 2:We need the way that the public perceives and views and chooses what nonprofits to support to change as well, and so, most broadly, I hope that the work that we do with this organization plays a role in this overall shift again away from I think nonprofit isn't even a legal term, I think it's a slang as much as anything in an era and that we graduate out of a nonprofit era and into a pro-impact era for both our organizations and the public supporting them, where we make these investments in organizations that really have the capacity to scale and even when you start to zoom out at that level and look at like the amount that people are giving to political presidential candidates is essentially money that people are giving to try to create the type of world that they want and is that returning the type of world that they want?
Speaker 2:What would happen if we took a large part of that money and invested them in nonprofit organizations that were building more modern, scalable models? What kind of return would you get on actually creating a better world if you take that approach?
Speaker 1:Boom, and we'll leave it right there. I don't think I could have ended it any better way. Greg, thank you so much for being here. How can listeners participate in what you're doing? How can they contact you? What's the best way to get involved?
Speaker 2:LinkedIn being a really big one. We've got a website, proimpactorg, as well. And ultimately, one of the things I've always loved about the name of your podcast Mission to Movements I think that fits into that same ethos. I'm trying to take our mission and turn it into a movement and so any degree to which that content resonates. If you are an ED, come and check it out. If you can share it with your ED, if you can just amplify it on LinkedIn or on another social platform, to sort of like get these ideas in front of people who they might resonate for and for some people they're not and it's not a fit for their organization, and that's totally fine to get these ideas and opportunities to be part of a community and content in front of people who might want to join it. You know that helping to turn it in from a mission into a movement would be the number one way.
Speaker 1:I love it Awesome. Thank you so much for being here and creating this new awesome platform. I can't wait to check it out and be part of it.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movements. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review. Wherever you're listening, your feedback helps us reach more changemakers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button too, so you'll never miss an episode, and until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
